5 ms·

It makes no less sense than a painting. If you accept that an original painting has more value than a perfectly good copy, whilst being undistinguishable for an

It makes no less sense than a painting. If you accept that an original painting has more value than a perfectly good copy, whilst being undistinguishable for anyone except a few experts, you should realize NFT's have the exact same arrangement, except 'originality' is determined by the blockchain instead of an expert.

arrow7000 5y ago
Except that when you own a painting you actually own the physical painting. Not a key to a link to a URL of the file.
vesinisa 5y ago
Well yes, exactly. The original painting has value exactly because it is not a copy. And "owning" the first tweet ever sent? What does that even mean?? At the end of the day "ownership" mostly has any meaning within the legal system. NFTs seem to create something akin to a shadow copyright but which makes no sense. Oh well, maybe I am just a simpleton.
- Fern_Blossom 5y ago
  >And "owning" the first tweet ever sent? What does that even mean?? No, no, no. It's worse than you think. An NFT is more like a plastic cup with Pikachu printed on it. You don't own the rights to Pikachu. You just bought a cup with his face on it. With NFTs, there is no contract to own the actual "thing". Just simply the piece of "merch" (the NFT) with the likeness associated with it. Except, a plastic cup still has value to drink from or hold your toothbrushes.
  - almostkorean 5y ago
    This is true for many NFTs but not all. For example, cryptopunks, autoglyphs, meebits only exist on-chain. Then there are NFTs like artblocks.io where the code to generate your NFT is on-chain and the output is determined by the transaction hash.
- detaro 5y ago
  At the core, "NFT" is a primitive. It's an entry in a ledger with some properties, it doesn't mean anything. Any meaning is a legal or social construct on top of that, and any perceived value derives from that. And when it comes to the social part, the value really only depends on enough people believing into it. There's a bunch of different things going on, with different people doing different things. E.g. on some art NFT platforms, a legal license is attached that says that if you hold the NFT for an artwork, you get permission to display that just as you would have permission to display lets say a piece of software art you bought from them. The NFT just is a representation of who holds that license right now, instead of a software license represented by a piece of paper being sold, or an entry in a license database somewhere. Digital artists have struggled with how to sell a digital thing that can be copied losslessly for a while. Expensive digital art is often sold as some physical thing, e.g. a print, an installation with some screens showing the artwork, or a movie on DVDs. The limited number of the physical things provides a scarcity that apparently has value to a lot of people, leading to higher sales prices, but is also somewhat frustrating if you want the digital thing to be the art. In contrast, when they try to sell just files, that's basically not happening. People will spend hundreds on a print, but not $5 on the digital file the print was created from. And for some, it now turns out that NFTs also provide that scarcity, in the purely digital domain. Sure, everyone can go and download the file, but if you bought the NFT you have a record that proves that you actually bought the thing from the artist. That appears to have value to some people, and they pay the same kind of money as they would for a print etc. If you don't have an explicit legal thing, it comes down to social convention that this (virtual) thing you are holding has some value to some people. Some collectibles are somewhat of an analogue: Stamps. signed photographs. pokemon cards. Skins in Counter-Strike. All those have no obvious reason why they are worth a lot a money (or not), except that enough people want them and are willing to spend to get them. If a piece of paper with some dudes signature somehow has value to some people, why can't a bag of bits with a digital signature have value to others? And of course there's lots of hype and too much money floating around that makes all this more extreme, leads to people throwing money at it in the hope to make a profit, and makes the amounts paid for the headline-making things just seem entirely stupid. But that's roughly the forces at work, if we agree to the specific value judgements or not (very similar to collectables markets again, those seem equally weird to me in the extremes).
bosswipe 5y ago
You're confounding the work of art with a kind of certificate that is nebulously attached to the art.
wsc981 5y ago
> It makes no less sense than a painting. Well, the high-end art market is kinda scammy, is it not [0]? I think it's pointless to pay millions of dollars for an original painting when a decent copy can be had for a fraction of the cost. And it would look just as nice. --- [0]: https://qz.com/103091/high-end-art-is-one-of-the-most-manipulated-markets-in-the-world/ https://qz.com/103091/high-end-art-is-one-of-the-most-manipu...
nly 5y ago
Paintings have provenance. If you own a Da Vinci you're literally able to touch the canvas that the master himself touched. Your ownership will forever be apart of that works history, and it's yours to enjoy privately and exclusively whenever you want. It's an indulgence. Nobody will ask you in 20 years what it was like to own an NFT, because they can all have the exact same experience by just looking at the blockchain on their device. Humans ultimately value stories and experiences, and anything that gets work out of the way so we can spend more time having them.
- gomox 5y ago
  The NFT is a token for the story behind it, just like the artwork. It is issued by the artist. It has even better provenance tracing than the artwork, which could be a fake.
  - bhandziuk 5y ago
    What's to stop an artist from selling you a print as an original through an NFT?
    - Sargos 5y ago
      You can see that the artist made NFTs on chain. That's actually how you can verify uniqueness as anyone can see this NFT is authentic and not a random copycat.
      - bhandziuk 5y ago
        What is an artist sells a a print verified by an NFT. The person who buys that print wants to sell it again. They make a copy of the print and sell the copy with the NFT. They keep the original print. The NFT doesn't seem like it did anything there other than be used as deception for the second buyer. Is there a way to actually link the NFT to the thing the NFT is supposedly tied to?
        Sargos 5y ago
tomp 5y ago
NFTs are like taking a Picasso, making a copy, shredding the original, and signing a paper that says the copy is actually the “real one”. 100% the same thing
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Or the owner of Picasso asking you if you want virtual token of his Picasso. You give him some money, and you get to say you own token of Picasso. While the person still owns and can sell the original. He could even get cut out of the further sales of Picasso even after he sold it... And I suppose technically nothing stops new owner of the physical object making new token of this time "his Picasso"...
  - cma 5y ago
    It could even turn out later that he sold another 1000 tokens of it earlier that were hidden until a timed smart contract revealed them.
- prepend 5y ago
  I’m not aware of any NFTs that work this way. No not 100%. If there were destructive scans of a Picasso where the only thing digital was the NFT, then yes. It would also be kind of neat in a terror kind of way to actually shred the Picasso and issue an NFT. The problem is that I still have copies that look just like the Picasso. Infinite. If NFTs start being linked with rights, then that might work. Like the copyright ownership is conveyed to the owner of the NFT. It’s kind of like buying a numbered print of a painting and trusting the artist to not make more.
angio 5y ago
NFTs are more like fine prints, which derive their value from the sticker that says "copy X of Y" than from the print itself.

arrow7000 5y ago

Except that when you own a painting you actually own the physical painting. Not a key to a link to a URL of the file.

vesinisa 5y ago

Well yes, exactly. The original painting has value exactly because it is not a copy. And "owning" the first tweet ever sent? What does that even mean?? At the end of the day "ownership" mostly has any meaning within the legal system. NFTs seem to create something akin to a shadow copyright but which makes no sense. Oh well, maybe I am just a simpleton.

Fern_Blossom 5y ago
>And "owning" the first tweet ever sent? What does that even mean?? No, no, no. It's worse than you think. An NFT is more like a plastic cup with Pikachu printed on it. You don't own the rights to Pikachu. You just bought a cup with his face on it. With NFTs, there is no contract to own the actual "thing". Just simply the piece of "merch" (the NFT) with the likeness associated with it. Except, a plastic cup still has value to drink from or hold your toothbrushes.
- almostkorean 5y ago
  This is true for many NFTs but not all. For example, cryptopunks, autoglyphs, meebits only exist on-chain. Then there are NFTs like artblocks.io where the code to generate your NFT is on-chain and the output is determined by the transaction hash.
detaro 5y ago
At the core, "NFT" is a primitive. It's an entry in a ledger with some properties, it doesn't mean anything. Any meaning is a legal or social construct on top of that, and any perceived value derives from that. And when it comes to the social part, the value really only depends on enough people believing into it. There's a bunch of different things going on, with different people doing different things. E.g. on some art NFT platforms, a legal license is attached that says that if you hold the NFT for an artwork, you get permission to display that just as you would have permission to display lets say a piece of software art you bought from them. The NFT just is a representation of who holds that license right now, instead of a software license represented by a piece of paper being sold, or an entry in a license database somewhere. Digital artists have struggled with how to sell a digital thing that can be copied losslessly for a while. Expensive digital art is often sold as some physical thing, e.g. a print, an installation with some screens showing the artwork, or a movie on DVDs. The limited number of the physical things provides a scarcity that apparently has value to a lot of people, leading to higher sales prices, but is also somewhat frustrating if you want the digital thing to be the art. In contrast, when they try to sell just files, that's basically not happening. People will spend hundreds on a print, but not $5 on the digital file the print was created from. And for some, it now turns out that NFTs also provide that scarcity, in the purely digital domain. Sure, everyone can go and download the file, but if you bought the NFT you have a record that proves that you actually bought the thing from the artist. That appears to have value to some people, and they pay the same kind of money as they would for a print etc. If you don't have an explicit legal thing, it comes down to social convention that this (virtual) thing you are holding has some value to some people. Some collectibles are somewhat of an analogue: Stamps. signed photographs. pokemon cards. Skins in Counter-Strike. All those have no obvious reason why they are worth a lot a money (or not), except that enough people want them and are willing to spend to get them. If a piece of paper with some dudes signature somehow has value to some people, why can't a bag of bits with a digital signature have value to others? And of course there's lots of hype and too much money floating around that makes all this more extreme, leads to people throwing money at it in the hope to make a profit, and makes the amounts paid for the headline-making things just seem entirely stupid. But that's roughly the forces at work, if we agree to the specific value judgements or not (very similar to collectables markets again, those seem equally weird to me in the extremes).

bosswipe 5y ago

You're confounding the work of art with a kind of certificate that is nebulously attached to the art.

wsc981 5y ago

> It makes no less sense than a painting. Well, the high-end art market is kinda scammy, is it not [0]? I think it's pointless to pay millions of dollars for an original painting when a decent copy can be had for a fraction of the cost. And it would look just as nice. --- [0]: https://qz.com/103091/high-end-art-is-one-of-the-most-manipulated-markets-in-the-world/ https://qz.com/103091/high-end-art-is-one-of-the-most-manipu...

nly 5y ago

Paintings have provenance. If you own a Da Vinci you're literally able to touch the canvas that the master himself touched. Your ownership will forever be apart of that works history, and it's yours to enjoy privately and exclusively whenever you want. It's an indulgence. Nobody will ask you in 20 years what it was like to own an NFT, because they can all have the exact same experience by just looking at the blockchain on their device. Humans ultimately value stories and experiences, and anything that gets work out of the way so we can spend more time having them.

gomox 5y ago
The NFT is a token for the story behind it, just like the artwork. It is issued by the artist. It has even better provenance tracing than the artwork, which could be a fake.
- bhandziuk 5y ago
  What's to stop an artist from selling you a print as an original through an NFT?
  - Sargos 5y ago
    You can see that the artist made NFTs on chain. That's actually how you can verify uniqueness as anyone can see this NFT is authentic and not a random copycat.
    - bhandziuk 5y ago
      What is an artist sells a a print verified by an NFT. The person who buys that print wants to sell it again. They make a copy of the print and sell the copy with the NFT. They keep the original print. The NFT doesn't seem like it did anything there other than be used as deception for the second buyer. Is there a way to actually link the NFT to the thing the NFT is supposedly tied to?
      - Sargos 5y ago

tomp 5y ago

NFTs are like taking a Picasso, making a copy, shredding the original, and signing a paper that says the copy is actually the “real one”. 100% the same thing

Ekaros 5y ago
Or the owner of Picasso asking you if you want virtual token of his Picasso. You give him some money, and you get to say you own token of Picasso. While the person still owns and can sell the original. He could even get cut out of the further sales of Picasso even after he sold it... And I suppose technically nothing stops new owner of the physical object making new token of this time "his Picasso"...
- cma 5y ago
  It could even turn out later that he sold another 1000 tokens of it earlier that were hidden until a timed smart contract revealed them.
prepend 5y ago
I’m not aware of any NFTs that work this way. No not 100%. If there were destructive scans of a Picasso where the only thing digital was the NFT, then yes. It would also be kind of neat in a terror kind of way to actually shred the Picasso and issue an NFT. The problem is that I still have copies that look just like the Picasso. Infinite. If NFTs start being linked with rights, then that might work. Like the copyright ownership is conveyed to the owner of the NFT. It’s kind of like buying a numbered print of a painting and trusting the artist to not make more.

angio 5y ago

NFTs are more like fine prints, which derive their value from the sticker that says "copy X of Y" than from the print itself.